Others in the NeoGAF forums point out that things still look a bit rough for an October release, though of course we're only seeing what Lionhead wants us to see. I've been known to take notes while on phone calls only to discover later that what I've written down had exactly no bearing on anything whatsoever. Perhaps he just loves the word October. Certainly is a very earthy word.

Lionhead Video Diary 6 (Fable II) [NeoGaf Forums - Thanks Fritz!]

So what is it? In Molyneux's own words, "I think it's such a significant scientific achievement that it will be on the cover of Wired." Normally hallowed ground for scientific advancements on par with baking an inedible cake in the shape of a Wii, Molyneux thinks that a decade's worth of work on AI, simulation and character interaction is worthy of a cover treatment.

Video game AI advances have already made the cover of Wired—Munch's Oddysee graced the mag's cover in 2002—but Molyneux's photogenic nature and capacity for extensive quoting will surely make for a much interesting return to newsstand prominence.

Peter Molyneux: My Next Game a 'Significant Scientific Achievement' [Wired] [Image Credit]

For a long, long time I've been credited unduly... Not so much these days, because the role of a designer is much, much more understood. But for a very long time, I was way, way over-credited for many things.

one of the things that you talk about is the sustainability of these huge, huge titles, and how close this model is, at the moment, with what happened in the movie studios when they stumbled upon the Cecil B. DeMille blockbuster — Quo Vadis, Cleopatra, all that...

And they suddenly turned from making films that cost five million dollars, into making films that cost a hundred million dollars. And that caused all the small studios to just completely shutter, for a long time, until they found a new way of working. You know, where everyone came together.

SEE?! He does have eyeballs. Told ya so!
Fable 2 Diary [GameTrailers via Fanboy Killswitch Thanks, DJ T!]

The diary starts off with Senior programmer Alan Wright talking about the magic of Fable 2. There's no spellbook in the game, instead you set spells to a quick list. Wright's favorite spell is the lightning spell, which causes the victim to flash in and out of a skeleton model as he's being electrocuted.

The diary goes on to show some behind the scenes footage of Microsoft's GDC keynote, with a special appearance by Cliff Bleszinski who demands "10 percent more dog" in Fable 2, and gives some time to Molyneux to talk about offline multiplayer in the game.

I really would love to redo a version of Syndicate. Syndicate was probably one of my favourites

I can tell you definitively that there is absolutely an acorn and it does absolutely grow into a tree. And it is actually part of the story now. We decided we got into so much trouble over acorns and trees that we are going to make it part of the main thread of the story in "Fable 2".

...And then [Dimitri] moved from [an] experiment to a moment in time that happened six months ago when a discovery was made, and this discovery has been so exciting that it has lead to Lionhead focussing on it and sculpting a game around that. I think that discovery is so significant... This discovery has lead us to start a game and that game will be on the front cover of Nature magazines and Science magazines.

""We don't use half the buttons on the 360 controller," admitted Molyneux, "simply because the whole dream I've got is that someone will sit down to play Fable 2 who has never played a game before and they can play with someone who's played games the whole of their lives.

"You hand somebody a game controller and it's like you've handed them a live gun or a hand grenade with the pin taken out"

I believe Harrison is exaggerating, but then again I make it a point never to carry around live hand grenades on my person so who knows? They both make a very good point. Back when games consoles first started there was a joystick and a button, but since then controllers have evolved to the point where you can find a complicated looking map within the first two pages of most game manuals.

Harrison went on to praise two innovators in the realm of control...Nintendo for the Wiimote, which gives non-gamers something more familiar to work with, and Apple's iPhone, which he says appeals to the user's natural instincts.

"I saw this first hand a few weeks ago where a two year old was playing with an iPhone and he knows how to get the pictures up of mum and dad. The two year-old then intuitively thought that all electronic devices worked like that," said Harrison. "He's pressing the TV to change channels."

"He's right and the rest of us are wrong - that should be applied universally. Apple should be applauded for that innovation," he added.

Harrison: Non-gamers see controllers as live guns [GamesIndustry.biz]

I was a bit of a prat back then, to be honest. To be fair, I think [EA] didn't do anything bad. I was just very immature, and I was coming to terms with not having 30 of my friends but instead having 200 strangers around me. That was difficult, and I made life difficult for them.

Given the choice, I'd obviously choose a hard drive every day of the week...But the balance to that is you're supporting a system which is an awful lot cheaper.

What I'm trying to address with Fable 2 is say 'Look, anybody can play this game.' That's what I really want. So supporting the cheaper price is really important.

The other feature is a little more unique. A few weeks prior to the release of Fable 2, Lionhead will put out an XBLA title that contains a few gambling minigames. Any and all money you earn in those, you can export into Fable 2 when you get the final game. Sure, it's a neat gimmick, but it's also teaching you a lesson: you don't get money during quests in Fable 2. Because Skeletons in caves don't carry wallets. The only way you can earn money in the game is to either work for it, or win it by gambling.

Add those to the dog and the fact I really dug the first Fable and yes, Peter, despite my best attempts at ignoring your promises, I'm excited for this game.

I think it's a huge tragedy. I mean, you might as well say PC gaming is World of Warcraft and The Sims... The weird thing is everyone's got a PC, they're just not buying software for it.

The currently unnamed achievements run the gamut from story-driven milestones to those won in combat to a handful of "secret" gamerscore boosters. Even though West dogs Eternal Sonata for being littered with "secret" achievements and talks up statistics that say such things discourage games sales, if they had their druthers, there'd be more.

Read on for West's analysis of how others handled it, such as Mistwalker's Blue Dragon achievements ("Terrible").

Achievements, What Achievements? [Fable Dev Blog - thanks, Amandeep!]

I've had a pet project I've been working on for years, three of them if my memory is right. It started as a simple idea: You can judge a lot from a person's desk. I bet you could judge just as much from their home entertainment system. So I decided it would be fun to try and track down some pictures from the work desks and home gaming set-ups of the people who work in and cover the video game industry. Simple right? Not so much.

Turns out that many of the people are either too busy or too private to want to participate in such a project. To make matters worse, there's always fear that something sitting on someone's desk, that ends up in a photo, could actually be news worthy. Like a secret project or the next big thing. But I didn't give up and about once a year I'd harass a bunch of game developers for photos. Finally, this year, the harassment paid off.

What started as a trickle of photos turned quickly into the collection of galleries you'll find on the jump: More than 40 different photo galleries from 17 studios, seven publications, two industry movers and shakers and a couple of fun surprises.

You'll get to see the desk of such greats as Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux and Tetsuya Mizuguchi along with plenty of others. Remember you can comment both on the next page and on each individual photo if you click on them.

If I find there is interest, I will try to periodically update this gallery of galleries with more developers, journalists and industry movers and shakers. Have fun.

DEVELOPERS
2K Games

ASTRO Gaming

Buzz Monkey Software

Capcom

Eat, Sleep, Play

Electronic Arts

Firaxis Games

Flying Lab Software

Gearbox Software

Harmonix Music

Incognito Entertainment

Insomniac Games

Kojima Productions

Lionhead Studios

NanaOn-Sha

Naughty Dog

NCSoft

NetDevil

Neversoft Entertainment

Ninja Theory

Pandemic Studios

Petroglyph Games

THQ

Q Entertainment

JOURNALISTS

Blue's News

BoingBoing

EGM

The Escapist

GameLife

Joystiq

Kotaku

MTV

Slashdot Games

VE3D

VH1

INDUSTRY FOLK

MISCELLANIES
I AM 8-BIT

Penny Arcade

Whorecraft

Video Games Live

"Late 2008. Maybe when the leaves have a slight brownish tinge - but are still on the trees, if you see what I mean."

Fable 2 in late 2008 - Molyneux [Eurogamer]

"To get tough and frank questions from gamers is what I am looking forward to this Friday. I don't mind whether they are about Fable 2, Lionhead's other games or the industry in general." said Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux.

Check out the Lionhead community blog for more information. For those unable to attend, make sure to visit the Child's Play charity web site to learn how you can make a contribution.

childsplaycharity.org [Lionhead Community]

Lionhead Video Diary - Episode Three [gametrailers]

All I can say is that Microsoft is an incredibly smart company and I never fail to be impressed by just how clever they are. Don't forget this is the company which pioneered LIVE which I believe will ultimately be far more impactful on video games in the long term than something like the Wii controller.

It's nowhere near finished. Think about that for a second. It is not finished. So yes, the game will look at least a gazillion times better than anything you've seen of Fable 2 so far. Anyone doubting that for a split second deserves a kick in the butt. Compared to some other games, Fable 2 is graphically going to be a Masterpiece. We are talking about vast and expansive outdoor locations, with added night and day cycle with realistic lighting effects that dynamically change the environment around you. There will be uber-detailed textures and lighting on up to fifty character models on screen, all of which will cast a dynamic shadow of themselves on that same environment. There is a physics engine, a simulation engine and about a thousand years of knowledge of things that I'm not even trying to understand. According to our water-expert Fran "we are going to kick Bioshock's water!" He gets a little excited sometimes; Italian passion! But the game will look Great.

Peter Molyneux could not attend his keynote today titled, "Life, Love and Death: Drama & Story Experience in Video Games." So instead, Staging Designer Georg Backer presented Lionhead's thesis on how games need to change.

What followed were somewhat classic Lionhead production examples—assets must change over time to tell the story (from your character, to things around you).

Backer explained that their Fable 2 dog and one-button combat system are both, hopefully, all part of games finding their unique voice, learning how they can share narrative as easily any other format. Because ultimately, Lionhead sees families talking over dinner about a movie they just saw, a book they just read and, without a beat, the game they've been playing.

Now all that is well and good, but it's their development process that's so baffling. While in search of this unique voice—something that could be a decade off they are quick to admit—Lionhead is waist-deep in Hollywood school: video editors advise better camera cuts in their combat system, and sword masters teach camera friendly movie combat.

And it's not that Lionhead partakes in interdisciplinary studies that so confounding, but that they talk about their "unique voice" and the tricks of Hollywood in a completely intermixed fashion.

The presentation was a developer's call to arms, but it was also a simultaneous cadence of retreat—instructions to regroup and learn from our Hollywood masters.

Less cynically, I think this is the message that even Lionhead has not yet said clearly and most game developers are afraid to admit:

Games, despite how often they emulate film's cliches, fall far short of the movie industry's time-tempered production methods. So games must first play a bit of catch-up before we can really begin the discussion of profound interactive narrative technique.

There's no doubt in my mind that we will be playing more games on mobile devices. What those mobile devices will be, and what they're capable of is still very much up for grabs.

They're changing as fast as the early computer games industry changed, if not faster. My one wish for that is that mobile phones were made with some sympathy for games to be played on them, because they're not, and that must be immensely frustrating for people developing for them.

It's down to some very simple things - these clicky buttons are useless for playing games, and it's down to some other stuff, display drivers and hardware chips obviously. But even if you had simple buttons that would help a lot...

It's just very clunky at the moment, and every time I try and play a mobile game I end up wanting a PSP, or DS.

I hate that we spend millions of dollars designing our games and only 1 percent of people finish them...If they don't finish the game, it's like leaving the movie halfway through, so it's a rubbish movie to some extent, and that responsibility is on our shoulders.

A Fable for the Masses [nextgeneration]

He teased us about death back in May, but this time he actually elaborates. There is no death. Instead, your character gets beaten until he collapses. Then he (or she) gets beaten some more. And more. Continuously beaten until you get up. How do you get up? By paying for it in either experience or gold. How fast you get up, and presumably continue fighting and killing your enemies, depends on how much money you pay. Pay a lot, get up fast. Pay a little, lie on the ground for, say, sixty seconds.

So what's the consequence of not getting up fast? You get scarred. SCARRED. Irreversibly scarred. And the more scars you have, the more townsfolk, villagers, barristers and women despise you. Unless they're in some kinda weird scar club, which is still as of yet not confirmed to be in the game.

The inspiration for all this is, strangely enough, birthed from the scene in the latest James Bond movie where Bond is repeatedly punished in the genital area. Hard. And did we say repeatedly? Molyneux saw that Hollywood took their heroes beat them to a pulp, but never killed them. They would be scarred, sometimes irreversibly so, but never killed (unless you work with Jack Bauer). So why not take this mechanic and put it into Fable 2?

Since most of the game is spent in an effort to not die, let's talk about combat next. Molyneux says that in an RPG game, at least 50% of your playtime is going to be in combat. So he wanted to make a combat system that was both robust and accessible. The way he did that was by mapping just about every attack function (melee, at least) to the A button. It's definitely simple, and it's definitely button masher friendly—something P. M. said he wanted to embrace—but there's also a lot to do.

First, mashing the button just keeps you swinging and swinging. The AI will figure out your patterns and block most of your attacks, but some may get through. Timing presses correctly, while the enemy isn't blocking, is the key. Then there's blocking, which consists of holding down X. Holding down the attack button for a while gives you flourishes, which are essentially charged up moves.

If you want to get fancy, there's A and a direction for thrusts, and if you time everything correctly (A, hold A, or thrust A) you'll get a cool camera change that zooms in on the action. There's even a narrow focus to give it even more "dramatic effect". And on top of that, the battle music changes and adds drums, which supposedly is controlled by the rhythm of your attacks—or button mashes. It all comes together pretty cohesively.

However, Molyneux claims that the system is on par with say, a Virtua Fighter, but we don't quite agree. It's deep, sure, but it's not exactly at a Soul Calibur-esque level. But you do get to break items and throw stuff at enemies all with the same attack button. And although magic and ranged weapons weren't demoed, he says they work in much the same context-sensitive way as melee attacks.

As for the engine itself, it's also looking pretty good. Lips, as he pointed out himself, look like rubbish. And so does lighting on certain characters. But buildings, streets, breakable objects, flowers, character animations, and the general environment looked fantastic.

Is this the second of the big three things Peter Molyneux has in store for Fable 2? What's the third thing? I can't wait to find out.

Other speakers include:

• Jason Manley, Massive Black (USA)
• Christopher Schmitz, 10Tacle Studios (Germany)
• Jennifer MacLean, Comcast Interactive Media (USA)
• Dr. Michael Wimmer, The University of Vienna (Austria)
• Alexander Fernández, Streamline Studios (The Netherlands)
• Cindy Armstrong, Webzen (USA)
• Amir Taaki, Crystalspace (Finland)
• Jeff Strain, ArenaNet (USA)
• Vlad Ihora, Telia Sonora (Sweden)
• Barbara Lippe, Avaloop IT Solutions (The Netherlands)
• Pamela Kato The GamerX (USA)
• Uwe Nikl, Level 3 (United Kingdom)
• Matt Firor, Ultra Mega Games (USA)
• Konstantin Ewald, Osborne Clarke (Germany)

Eggebrecht has the honor of making the opening keynote speech at the conference. Don't choke, Julian! Kim Phu

Leipzig's Keynote Speakers Revealed [Advanced MN]

Download the HD version in correct aspect ratio vision here!

You go back in time twenty minutes to do the same thing over again. That's fine if I'm playing a platformer, not so fine if you're doing an RPG game.

This isn't just an interesting development, it's an interesting subject. Although I personally haven't been looking forward to the release of Fable 2 (because it means that the one television we have will inevitably be taken over by the boyfriend who will also cease to talk to me for two solid months), but I have to say, I'm very curious to see how Lionhead deals with death in-game. Kim Phu

Molyneux hints at next big Fable 2 announcement [Xbox 360 Fanboy]

Fable 2 in 2008 [Jeux France]

Two high honors, games like Populous, Dungeon Keeper and Fable under his belt, not to mention a studio buy out from Microsoft might lead you to believe Pete's got an out of control ego at this point, but you'd be wrong! Upon accepting the honor, Molyneux gave props to the rest of the Lionhead staff, saying:

I am extremely proud to have received this honour and would like to thank the French Ministry of Culture for this recognition. I would also like to say that I see this as a credit for everyone at Lionhead Studios, all our games are a team effort. I am just the figurehead.

What a swell guy. We've already forgotten about Black & White. Michael McWhertor

Sam over at Lionhead recently posted that the development team headed up by Peter Molyneux will soon be launching a regular video diary.

The first episode should be hitting in the next few weeks and will feature an inside look at Lionhead Studios and some very early game footage for Fable 2.

They've also set up a sub-forum on the site for gamers to go in and post questions for future episodes. I've got one: Are they really going to have STDs in Fable 2? Molyneux didn't mention that during the session I was in with him at GDC and it sounds a bit too much like acorn to tree to me. Brian Crecente

Lionhead Forums [Lionhead]

It's a question that's been asked a million times and has sparked endless debate with the likes of Roger Ebert, who in my opinion has no room to talk about art after the travesty that is Beyond The Valley of the Dolls. Gamasutra writer Brian Ochalla (who is a terrific interviewer) rolls the count over to a million and one by posing this question again in his most recent feature story. The difference in this article, however, is that Brian goes right to the heart of the matter and interviews such industry giants as Ian Bogost, Tim Shafer and Peter Molyneux. And while all those interviewed initially met the question with much "here we go again" eye rolling, they do admit to the subjects pertinence to the future of gaming. It's a great read and well worth the time to check out.

Personally, I'm still on the fence about the whole subject. There are certainly plenty of games that have incredible art in them, but whether or not the game itself can be considered art is, as all things like it, in the eye of the beholder. Flynn De Marco

Are Games Art? (Here We Go Again...) [Gamasutra]

Make the jump for parts 2 and 3. Flynn De Marco

I'm sitting in a small room with Peter Molyneux listening to him talk up Fable 2.

There are, he tells me, three big things coming to the sequel to his role-playing game, but he only wants to talk about one of them today: Love.

Love, Molyneux says, comes in three general flavors in the game. There is the appreciation the wide world feels toward your character as he lives and fights in their world. There is the ability to make love and make babies. Yes, you can be both a man or a woman and if you're a woman, you can get pregnant. A first, he believes, for a main character in an RPG.

But the big thing, one of the biggest parts of Fable 2, will be the introduction of a dog to the game. Not just any dog, but your dog. The dog will be faithful to you and will have a deeply nuanced artificial intelligence so you won't actually control your dog at all. Instead your dog will act as a sort of living HUD. The game has no map, no other user interface on screen. Instead you will have to rely on the dog and what he sees and does.

You also will control the dog by your own actions. A great example. You come upon two bad guys and pull our your gun (yes, the game has guns) and the dogs knows automatically attack the closer targets.

Molyneux showed us much more about this amazing dog character, but I'll have to dig into it later in another post. Keep in mind this feature is already 100 percent implemented, meaning it has to be in Fable 2, at least in some sense.

On to Conan. Brian Crecente

Update: Sorry for the mysterious appearing and disappearing Fable 2 story a few days ago. Turns out that despite the fact that no one mentioned it for a month, the interview, and only that one interview, was under an embargo. This was pointed out in the initial email sent out quite awhile back and never reiterated in any of the following emails, nor in the meeting itself. When I happened to mention to Shane Kim that I had posted this interview, a handler came up to me later to point out quite nicely that it was in fact embargoed until today. I immediately took it down.

Peter Molyneux will be talking about innovation in Fable 2 at this year's Games Developer Conference in San Francisco, according to the Lionhead Times.

"When attempting to create a sequel the temptation is to add more of everything but is this enough? Lionhead Studios ambition for Fable 2 is to create sequel which is truly a land mark title and to achieve this there must be evolution and revolution. This talk will centre around revolutions in Fable 2. This talk will examine how key game play elements have been refined and expanded. It will also look at what inspiration was drawn for the original game and what lessons were learnt from Fable. The processes used to arrive at these design decisions can be applied to a broad spectrum of genres and so are relevant to a large sector of the development community. Plus Peter Molyneux has promised to reveal a totally unexpected feature in Fable 2."

Ooh, ooooh. Is it that the trees will grow as the game progresses, because that would be totally bitchin'. Brian Crecente

Molyneux at GDC 2007 [Lionhead Times]

Tonight in the UK, Peter Molyneux will take to the stage to help get the word out about the Xbox 360's recently released game developers Creator's Club.

Molyneux is expected to talk about how he got into the industry and what XNA could mean to the industry as it moves forward.

Even more interesting, Rare Studios this week opened their studios to the public as part of a promotion for the hobbyist development tools.

Microsoft's Chris Satchell said people were allowed to sign up to spend time in the studios with the Games Express Studio software and Rare developers working on their own games.

All of the spots were quickly filled, but it will be interesting to see what comes out of this rare (I couldn't help myself) mash-up of enthusiast and developer. Brian Crecente

Lionhead Studios head and current Microserf Peter Molyneux is a smart man. Just take a look at his games: Populous, Black & White, Theme Park and The Movies. Don't they sound so smart?

Well, Peter wasn't always so clever. He used to be a dummy. And everyone used to call him a doofus, undermining the lad's self confidence—even to this day! Take a gander at what he tells Gamasutra:

I was always a failure. When I was at school, I was just an idiot. And everyone thought I was an idiot, and everyone would always say that I would never do anything or get anywhere. And because of that, I feel I've yet to do that game which really makes a difference—that really is the landmark game.

That means that I do push myself—I can look you in the eye and truly say that I'm trying to make Fable 2 the greatest game I will ever build. If you write that, it will get me in an enormous amount of trouble, but that is what I truly believe.

Peter Molyneux, former idiot makes good. Brian Ashcraft

Fable 2 Is Gonna Be Great, Says Pete [Gamasutra]

When Peter Molyneus speaks, gamers listen... to a crazy man-child blithering in the corner. The man behind Black & White and numerous other middling-to-execrable games has recently given a speech as part of the EA lecture, 'The Industry Speaks: The Future of Entertainment."

What is that future? Well...

We have felt the emotion of killing and maiming and the emotions of power. But we need more complex and interesting emotions. That is where real innovation is going to come from... The innovation that you, me and friends are playing a game together and we're experiencing male-bonding as we all cry over the same thing. That is my ultimate plan. One of the emotions I hope, if I do my job right, is the emotion of being loved. Not of you loving something, but something loving you.

Got that, you pathetic waste of skin? Peter Molyneux's going to create a game that makes you feel loved because, god knows, everyone else sees you as a flabby, engorged spermatoza that should rightly have withered in your father's testes.

Not that Molyneux counts himself out of the same category, you understand.

Yes, there's World of Warcraft, and it's fantastic. I sat in my underpants until four in the morning playing that game for about six months and I realised I was one of the millions of people doing that.

Luckily, even crazyman Molyneux had enough sense to leave out details of his poop sock from the speech. Florian Eckhardt

Emotional games will push industry forward, says Molyneux [Games Industry]

Microsoft's Peter Molyneux was sniffed out on a train by the Kikizo folks, who immediately pestered him. Good on 'em. Previously, Peter's musings made it seem like the upcoming Fable 2 was much like his uber secret game Dimitri. So the question was put forth if the games are actually one and the same? Peter's answer:

Ah yes. I can see where you get that from. Here's the thing, Fable 2 and Dimitri are not the same game, Dimitri has been in development for a very long time, but when we started on Fable 2 we decided that some of the technology or ideas from Dimitri should be in Fable 2 as well, and we haven't started to talk about the specifics of that yet. With Dimitri, we still need to decide on a final name, because as you know, this is just a project name that is the name of my godson...

He did confirm that these are the only two projects he is currently working on, but wouldn't say if Dimitri would be a PC title, 360 game or both. Yet, he did say the game was temporarily named after his godson, taking all badassady away from the title whatsoever. Better than naming it after his dog, but still. Brian Ashcraft

Peter Talks Dimitri [Kikizo]